Sharing. It’s one of the first skills that we have to learn as kids and, as anyone who has gamed for long enough, some kids never quite learned how to do it. Our longtime listener, Jim Laubacker, posed a question regarding how to best deal with players that won’t share the spotlight. As a bonus, Jim is also trying to balance a group that is a hybrid of in-person and virtual players!
In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave discuss the ways in which they’ve adjusted to turn the dominant and passive players weaknesses at the table into strengths. Additionally, they delve more into the difficulties they’ve experienced in running hybrid games and some tips and tricks with dealing with a very new issue in TTRPGs.
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1:33 Our listener question – How to deal with players that won’t share the spotlight with a bonus wrinkle… the group in question is a hybrid of in-person AND virtual.
3:05 Players that are so excited that they want to be involved in every scene.
4:44 The very heavy lift when dealing with a hybrid table of part in-person, part virtual.
10:36 The difference between players who are actors and those who are audience members.
15:45 The player that is involved with Every. Single. Activity. And my example that pushes DM Tony’s buttons about spell components and wizards…
21:00 Narrative side scenes: an easy way to give every player their spotlight.
25:45 Review the characters in your session prep: Find the spots in the session for their moments.
28:00 There’s no “I” in team (think Avengers over Indiana Jones) and how sharing the spotlight can keep the campaign together instead of ending.
35:50 Curating your group and turning player weaknesses into strengths.
37:37 Giving players a “power position” to balance out the dominant players(s) – the birth of Little One.
43:02 The spectrum of passive vs. dominant players – kind of like railroads vs. sandboxes.
46:20 Final Thoughts.
I deal with the issue of players dominating/passive players. I play online with a group, I take a different tack than you guys. I feel the players need to police themselves and my role as the DM is to not get involved in how they interact. I do, however, provide them tons of information on how to play nice together. Information from the actual business world on “team work” and from other various D&D fora.
Finally, I mandate a caller in the game, which rotates each week, and the caller is supposed to give their ideas last, but query each player for their ideas. Also, I advise players to reduce the amount of “why” explanation for their desired action and stick mostly to the “what”. I also advise them not to defend their positions too much. If they are overruled, they are overruled. We are playing D&D, not participating in debate club!
Anyway, despite “handing this off to the players” I still get involved and call on the quiet ones from time to time.
MW Lewis,
That’s quite a good use of the old “Caller” mechanic from the early editions. Our issue with that, originally, was that it was one player, which kept others from being as involved, but by having the position rotate, it kind of solves all the issues at once! Thanks for sharing!
-DM Dave